I love Google, I really do – they generally get it right, but I’m getting concerned.  I rely on Google for so much I worry that too much of my life is in one place.  And although the Ad’s they push are relatively unobtrusive, I’m starting to feel very much “watched”.  Like they know what I do, where I go.  Big Brothery.

So what are some good alternatives for Google services?

Search

How can we live without Google Search?  Let’s face it, they are the best.  Bing is ok, but I generally feel like I get what I want from Google faster than Bing, MSN or Yahoo.  There are a couple of good alternatives out there though that are worth a look.

• Scroogle
• Clusty
• ixquick

The best of them is scroogle.org.  Scroogle is a web search pluggin that does some really nice things.  It uses Goggle search but isolates you from the cookies that Googles writes to you , and doesn’t send your IP address to Google.  Most importantly, you don’t get any Ads!  As an added bonus, you get 100 search results per page.  Very nice.

Browser

I use several browsers – IE, Firefox and Chrome.  Chrome is usually the fastest, but I use Firefox more than the others.  A good open source Chrome alternative is Chromium.  It’s basically an open source version of Chrome.  The user interface is nearly identical, and it doesn’t track your info like Chrome does.  The home page for the project is here, and the latest windows build is here.

Google Calendar

There are loads of online calendars out there, MSN, Yahoo, MobileMe just to name a few.  I’d like to stay away from the big names – they aren’t better than Google and have many of the same privacy issues.  I’ve been looking at 30 Boxes (http://30boxes.com/) and so far I really like it.  The format is really nice, and it’s iCal based, so there are lots of ways to view the calendar (mobile devices, desktop, web) and there are tons of calendars to add in (holidays etc).  They calendar will send appointment reminders to your mobile device, and yes, there is an iPhone app.  I have not tried to hook it up to my iPhone calendar directly – would be great is that worked too.

This is a short list – just search for Google Alternatives and you will get plenty of reading material.  Other honorable mentions – OpenOffice.org, Zoho.com (very cool office tool, has email, CRM, project, docs etc).

BOOOO!!

reMail is/was a great email search app for the iPhone, and now that Google has purchased the company.  I have to believe this is strategic for Google and they will use the technology exclusively on Android phones, but from a consumer’s point of view, this sucks.  I hate it when anyone is proprietary about useful technology!

Google’s new phone, the Nexus One was released at CES (I really want to go one year!) and although at first blush the phone seems a rousing success, is Google really prepared to deal with supporting a phone?  Along with the initial sale of the hardware you need to be able to support the people who use the phone and have questions/problems.

Have you ever tried to contact Google?  There are no phone numbers.  No place to call, no human to yell at if your phone stops working or drops a call.  Google’s support model up until this point has been to have forums and email support for its products.  That works very well when you are dealing with software and software services, but phones are different.  User problems are immediate, and people get very mad when they are told sorry, send an email and we’ll get back to you in three days.  That model just won’t work!

According to the NY Times, Google recognizes the problem and says “we have to get better at customer service”.  This from Andy Rubin who is in charge of Android technology for Google.  That sounds great, right?  He goes on to say that instead of taking three days to respond to a customer email, they need to “close that three-day gap to a couple of hours”.  I’m sorry, what?  Are you kidding me?  NO, Mr Rubin, what you need to do is get an 800 number, staff a help desk, and answer people’s questions.   “A couple of hours” is not immediate and just will not do.

And what about enterprise support?  How would I ever think of deploying a device for which I had to wait three days (or a couple of hours) to get support?  It’s laughable.  For a company that gets enterprise computing as well as Google does, I’m really surprised at their complete flat footedness here.

I love most of what Google does – they think about things in unique ways that question the status quo and tend to make real improvements to technologies where I thought improvements were hard to come by and would largely be incremental (think Gmail).  With the Nexus One, I have high hopes that they will eventually pose a real threat to Apples dominance.  That said, Apple REALLY gets customer support and customer loyalty.  If Google has any hope of taping that market, they need to fix their customer service issues.

eWeek is reporting that Google is releasing software for BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) that will allow GMail to be routed to blackberry devices.  The software is in beta now, but will be available to users of Google Apps Premier when it is fully released in July.  Right now, the application syncs mail and contact information between the mobile device and the web application, but for calendar, information transfer is one way – from the web to the device.  Google says two way calendar sync will be an enhancement for later release.

According to Google’s release, Gmail will sync to the device in 60 seconds.  In field testing by eWeek, contact and calendar “do not get pushed to the device like e-mail does, but instead they piggyback with push mail.”  According to Google, this is to save on battery life.  Sounds like a nonsense explanation to me, but who am I to question.

I like the sound of this, but coming from a financial technology background, I don’t see it as being adopted by any finance firms because of the email retention and compliance rules.  Google Apps does have Postini for retention and compliance customization, and for legal searches, but I’d be surprised to see a finance firm releasing email control to any third party.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Gmail, and I think there are huge advantages to Gmail for the enterprise.  I have, in fact, recommended it to a client of mine.  That said, there is just no replacement for native MS Exchange.

I know this is off topic for a Tech blog, but it concerns Google, so please indulge me.

According to Google’s blog, they are using Goats to mow the grass at their Mountain View headquarters.  “A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.”

The Goats are from California Grazing, who have  “800 environmentally friendly, self propelled weed eaters for weed control and brush control, that are ready for your project.”  

You can’t make this stuff up.